In A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis wrties these remarkable words: "The most precious gift that marriage gave me was this constant impact of something very close and intimate yet all the time unimistakably other, resistant, in a word, real."
Yes, that is suddenly missing from any encounter I have with Anne. She has no schedules or agendas. She offers no contrary opinions or alternative perspectives. She is perpetually available and infintely absent, all at one sitting. She cannot provide a fence to corral my mental meanderings, a wedge to force me back into the midst of this grieving process. If I want to launch into flights of fancy or the depths of obsession, she is along for the ride without protest or praise. Her pictures always smile--such a convenient escape.
So I find the reality of others critical as I live through this. You have a job, even if I have taken this sabbatical of sorrow. You have appointments even though I can clear the calendar simply by pointing to my dead wife and watching everyone else scurry. You have commitments and enjoyments, responsibilities and the need for rest. I can shred my to do list and I get a pass. Your sheer solidity--your life in both the profound and ordinary sense--provides a backstop that keeps my grieving in play.
I am suggesting that in my experience today, this is a very good thing for me. Because, without some sort of resistance, some boundaries, something of Real Life, I would flee and flounder and flop around in agony without shape or direction. But when you continue to live around me and beyond my own self-preoccupation, you re-root me in Living too.
So odd that your need to put me off and get some things done may be the best thing you can do to help me today.
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